Hi folks,

Pretty new to vue having come from a Maya background. I'm doing a job for a museum and I though it would be a good oppertunity to try out vue as a new software addition. I must say I'm very impressed, and I think I'll come to rely on vue quite heavily in future.

For this piece I'm trying to create a late Triassic scene of a desert playa with a drying lake in the middle and grey limestone hills in the background. The piece is part of a graphical illustraction of how dino footprints become fossilized. I've made my dino's in maya and they're rigged and ready to go. What I'd like to do is place them in the scene and have them making footprints in the mud at the edge of the lake. It doesn't have to be animated as it's just a big display. i'd also like to have some sparse vegetation around the lake only, can I paint it on?

Firstly, how can I go about making realistic rocky screes down the side of the limestone hills? This is pretty important to the look. Secondly, what would be the best way to blend between the mud surrounding the lake and the cracked clay of the playa around it? Thirdly, how can I place the footprints in the mud convincingly, or indeed at all? This would really help me out, I'm glad I found this forum it looks great :). Any pointers would be much appreciated :).

Will.

 Most, if not all, of your questions will be addressed in the various excellent tutorials available free from GeekatPlay.

Good luck

Ahah, thanks! I've follwed a few of their tuts but hadn't noticed some really good ones. Thanks for pointing them out :). I'm still eager to hear anyone's suggestions though, the mor solutions the better :D!

"i'd also like to have some sparse vegetation around the lake only, can I paint it on? "

You can paint trees and rocks on with the ecopainter tool, its availiable as a module, or if you have vue 7 complete, infinate or xstream youll aready have it, its pretty good. :)

whats a scree?

Rich

Another trick I do, is, for precise placement of materials, say a scree slope, is to use a greyscale image
you cna copy & paste the terrian image from the terrain editor to Photoshop etc, or save it out as a tif or jpg
then use that to work on material layers, or a mixed material

using a greyscale image, you cna set it so that sya, blakc = scree slope material, white = rock
and so fort

also, you cna make screes by simply butting up extra terrains into the main rock cliff! ;)
commonly folk use multiple terrains, of varying materials and types to ahcieve a landscape, not jsut one monolothic and very tricky terrian object

so you can have a foreground terrain for the dino foot prints, leading into a scree slope with a different material, which leads into a cliff side, etc.

that any help? :)

Yes thats a great help thanks alot :-). The tank track tut should help me with the footprints, and I've more or less got the kind of scree slope I need, at least from a distance. Now I just need to figure out a way to blend the cracked clay into the mud of the lake, I guess if the mud was at a lower altitude I could just use a mixed material and tweak the influence of altitude until it looked right, would that work?

Will.

Attached Link: Making of 'Sic-Transit'

http://www.cornucopia3d.com/purchase.php?item_id=6732

Oh wow that's right on the money! I think I will be purchasing that!! Did you make that just to answer my question?

Quote - Oh wow that's right on the money! I think I will be purchasing that!! Did you make that just to answer my question?

Yes - It took me about  20 minutes to do this.  Let me know when you get the Stones and Groundcover package and I'll send you the sample scene above.  It requires the Stones and Grouncover package to mainpulate the ground mats.

Ok I have bought the pack, I've sent you a message with my email details. Thanks again.

Will.

Ok here's what I have so far. I've worked quite a bit on the playa terrain and the water, and the prints are kindof workin but I need to tweak the brush. Is there any way to alter the direction of the brush because at the mo the prints can only go straight! I still need to work alot on the distant hills, I'm not happy with them at all. But it's coming along, I'd like to see what you think of it. Thanks guys.

you have one (potential) option for brush rotation.

 rotate your terrain in the direction you  want your prints to follow
it seems like a pain but I think thats your only option.

FYI, your progress so far really rocks.  Just make sure you set your shadows to something a little softer for your final render.  The realism in your WIP image is destroyed by those harsh shadow lines.

Wow, that looks really good.

Thanks guys! Gary and catherine, I tried rotating the terrain while I was painting, the brush still only points one direction. It seems like brush rotation would be a really helpful feature, maybe they'll add it in a future version. The shadows are harsh, for my final renders I'll bump the quality up alot. I think I'll export a greyscale terrain map and then place a load of footprints all over the place using the map as a guide and then use the brush to "stamp" all of the footprints into the terrain in one go. I might even make two brushes, one for older more subtle prints in the dry clay and newer and crisper prints in the mud. If I play around with the hills enough they will look good eventually, just can't seem to find a good material to represent bare grey limestone.

The final challenge will be to get this guy into the scene, I suppose if I load my vue scene into maya (I'm using xtream) I can just do it from there?